NetworkM recently reached out in hopes of getting a few international perspectives on what the US election, its candidates and ultimately its outcome means to them (if anything) or how it may affect their country or region (if at all).  This topic is sure to ignite some good discussion. Here are a few short articles to get the conversation started: 

The US elections.  Where am I going?  Where am I coming from?
By Adrian Bowden

It's been a long road for some of us.  We have for some reason been waiting to "find out" where we are going.  We have been through all sorts of joys and fears and uncertainties over the last 8 years.  But maybe now we want to start heading firmly in a direction - where am I going?  Maybe we need to ask first of all, "where am I coming from"?

What is it that makes us do what we do?  I can only speak for myself.  I often don't know - I just do.  Sometimes I don't even do.  Maybe I have a feeling I don't quite understand.  Maybe I feel sometimes I am a piece in a game I have no control over.  Things happen and - did this have anything to do with my intention?  Where would my intention come from?

So we have to decide.  Yes this is the painful thing about being human and yet it is the core of our humanity.  We are free.  There is always a choice.  But how do we even start to make a choice when everything seems to be beyond our control.  What is control?

I live in Norway where politics is dominated by what may be described as socialist democracy.  Here we have universal health care, we have no death penalty, one can have a paid for abortion, one receives sick benefits equaling one's full salary for a whole year, the same with a parenting allowance for 10 months after giving birth to a child, generous unemployment benefits, secure and humane jails, civic pride, compulsory national army service and taxes that consume half your income.

I am leaving this land of which I just became a citizen to move to the US, where I cannot say any of the above things apply.  Why am I doing this?
I am coming from peace and I am going to a nation riddled with financial crises, racial conflict (sometimes open sometimes kept inside), an economic system which seems designed to make the rich richer and the average Joe happy with his consumerist lifestyle, a nation with armed garrisons across the planet and at war over what?

Where am I going?

Where I am coming from is not a question of history.  It is a question of right here right now who am I?  I am coming from something more than even my biography can help me to understand.  I can look at the burning wreckage or the shiny palace of my past and assume I know what is coming.  Or I can let the universe come with an intention to create something in co-operation with the universe.  If I find my real self in the moment I choose - amazing things can happen.

I don't need to be comfortable all my life.  I may actually need a struggle.  Where best to engage in this struggle than where the fundamental questions facing humanity today are expressed, debated and decided.  The burning issue is the human being.  So why am I going to the United States?  Not because it is here where the decisions are made! The decisions need to be made in each of us.  On November 4 each human being in the United States will have to make a decision.  My hope is that the answer to where am I going is answered by each person considering the question - where am I coming from?

A human being can connect to source by silence (or meditation), by accessing nature or through art.  It is these things that we don't have time for, that we destroy, that we buy sell and steal. Is it not a point that we can, when we make decisions simply ask, will this help me connect to source?  So, for example, the environmental and cultural policies of the US presidential candidates are perhaps what we should really be focusing on - not their economic and foreign policies.  

What choice would I make on 4 November?

Elections in the US from an Israeli Point of View
By Noam Sharon

A traditional Israeli approach to the dilemma of whether or not to support a US presidential candidate is by answering the question: "Is he good for the Jewish?"

And when Israelis talk about the good of 'the Jewish', the Jews of the US are on the center of concern. [As a group, the Jews of the US are obviously untroubled by the election's results more then anyone else in the US]. When Israelis concern about the Jewish people, they actually concern about the Jews who sit in Zion – so to say, themselves.

A popular cynical T-Shirt, a best seller amongst American tourists in Israel, quotes "America don't worry, Israel is behind you". The unanimous Israeli belief in the US political, financial and military power is a major pillar in Israel psychological well-being. Backed-up by the US assumed alliance, Israel is willing to face the assumed constant threats on its very existence, including the Iranian atom-bomb campaign. Obviously, no one wants those assumptions to be tested, as they were tested recently in the Georgian-Russian conflict.

For a traditional Israeli, therefore, "being good for the Jewish" as a US president means first of all maintaining America's super-power as the policeman of the world, as well as remaining its dominant economist and politician. In those conditions, Israel's conscious about its own actions and relation to its neighbors can stay dormant, as it is traditionally done. Continuing this line of thinking will end up in supporting a US presidency candidate that will promise the continuation of a foreign policy of global militant intervention. In our case it will be John McCain.

Traditional is the quality that feat McCain itself, a candidate that appears to be the exact continuation of the Bush doctrine: traditional foreign and domestic policy, traditional finance policy, and traditional environmental policy – everything that proved itself to be so wrong and harmful to the world. That’s why so many Israelis today realize that traditional thinking will just not do anymore.

If anything Obama is not – that will be traditional. Obama in his campaign is truly capturing our attention as a manifestation of spirit of change. His charismatic personality, his promise for different kind of politics, his innovative way to financing his own campaign, his commitment to environmental issues – everything in him makes you hope that a new state of mind will be instituted and elaborated once he becomes the influential man he seeks to be in the world.

Many Israelis understand that as well, and give their support to Barack Obama. Even from the narrow minded viewpoint of the good of the Jews, we understand that more of the same will just not do, and new thinking must be applied. The strength of the US will be regained only when it begins to direct its attention inwardly. In the same manner, Israel should seek its own inner strength while approaching its existential questions – and not its militant strength. Israel has so many strengths as an established democracy, a leading technologist, fine economist and an innovative thinker – and after 60 years of existence we should start conceiving ourselves as a fact and an equal member in the family of nations. As an equal member we should understand that our own good is included in the good of the whole world, and the good of the whole world demands Barack Obama.

The writer is the editor of AdamOlam Magazine – the Art of Education, Culture of Man and Social renewal inspired by Anthroposophy.

The Heart of Africa
By Arjan Bogaers

To avoid confusion it will have to be stated that the actual election will not affect the indicated groups/nations any more than any other event elsewhere in the world. What will affect us though, is the outcome of the election and the policies a new administration will put in place.

As the elections have not yet taken place, any opinion or projection is mere speculation. I suggest therefore that if we want to develop an insight into how Africa and its people are and would be affected by Western politics in general and US politics in particular it might be helpful to look at the role Africa plays in the world.

Stepping away from the usual political and economic analyses, I would like to present a somewhat different image. For this we need to take a detour and have a brief look at a particular aspect of the human anatomy: the heart.

Looking at the heart face-on, as it were, we can see how it is positioned just to the right of the centre line of the body, bordered either side by the two lungs. It has four chambers, divided by two intersecting partitions, or walls, forming a cross. The vertical axis of this cross has approximately the same inclination as the tilted axis of the earth. Maintaining our anterior view we see how two blood circulations move through the heart: the oxygen rich (warm) blood from the lungs through the right side and the oxygen-poor (cold) blood from the body through the left side. The cardio-pulmonary system in our thoracic cavity is a predominantly rhythmical system, whereby there exists a powerful relationship between the regular, continuous heartbeat and the in- and out breath.

Besides the heart being 'just a pump' as some would have it, it is in fact the only place in the circulation where the blood momentarily comes to a standstill and as such the heart is also a sense organ. More metaphorically speaking, the heart is always associated with our higher feeling of life, in particular with love, compassion and selflessness.

Moving from the human anatomy to the earth's 'anatomy', let us examine Africa, keeping in mind that there are no absolutes in geography; one looks at tendencies or ‘gestures’.

The African continent is positioned just to the right of the Earth's centre line, the Greenwich zero longitude meridian, bordered either side by two oceans: the Atlantic in the West and the Indian in the East. It is scored by two main furrows: the Congo basin running from east to west, traversed at right angles by the enormous Nile valley, running south to north, together forming a mighty valley cross incised into Africa's floor. The two gulf streams that wash along Africa's coasts consist of the warm Agulhas current on the right and the cold Benguela current on the left.  Historically, Africa was the first area where long before the Voyages of Discovery, Eastern and Western cultures met and intermingled mostly in a relatively peaceful manner.

My aim in presenting this unusual image is to motivate the idea that Africa is the bearer of the world's heart forces, that it can be seen as the spiritual or potential heart of the world.  So what does the state of Africa—with its everlasting drought, tribal wars, poverty and depletion—say about our relationship with the matters of the heart, especially when it comes to the present economical and political practices?

It has to be admitted that we experience on a global scale the collapse of structures that before were deemed to offer ultimate stability and security. In the light of the insight that Africa represents the heart of the world and the time of drastic changes that we will experience for at least another 5 - 10 years, world economy and world-governance, including the new Administration of the US, will have to be enlivened.  Enlivened by a change in objectives, so that keywords like 'maximum profit', 'share holder performances’, 'market domination' and 'people as consumers' can be replaced by 'maximum benefit for all', 'moral and social responsibility' and 'honoring human dignity'.

We might yet learn that a truly 'free-market economy' can only be called that once it is free of fear, greed and harm. In the matters of the heart we haven't even started yet.

The Road To Hell…
By Suenel Holloway

“Osama Bin Laden…Barack Obama. It rhymes! It scans! America’s Public Enemy No.1 and the would-be President. Yin and Yang…Day and Night…Good and Bad?  I feel like the paranoid dyslexic who always thought he was following somebody.

I was living in Namibia at the time of Independence. That vast land was overrun by “mad dogs and UNTAG men out in the midday sun.” Thousands of 4x4 vehicles crisscrossing the desert, destroying delicate ecologies with alacrity, but they came to do good, so denial is a river in Egypt. One could not but be aware of the irony:  hopeful Marxist terminology…everybody was a comrade and the proletariat had apparently spoken, while at that time the world was watching communism fail magnificently. My woolly white liberal motives were suspect, and no amount of work in education, training and localization could convince otherwise, because I was from South Africa. Today Namibia seems to be ‘working’ politically, socially, and economically. Maybe it is such a happy place because it is so huge and has such a small population.

I have just finished Barack Obama’s autobiography, Dreams from my Father. I wonder if the finest people have to be shaped by overcoming rather than nurturing. He is a mensch as well as a visionary. Perfectly sensible people at my book club seem to think it counts against him that he has not held a job in a big corporation. How effective is consumer propaganda! And look at what corporate thinking has done to the world! His opponent in the run for presidency is another WASP clone, tamping down fear of the unknown with middle-aged platitudes, vaguely upholding ‘family values’. In the as yet to me unlikely event of Obama being elected, it must surely counteract this lulling of the consciousness. I do realise that we probably only see the lowest common American denominator television fare in South Africa, but the frightening thing is that South Africans aspire to those values. People’s lives cannot be fixed by demolishing houses and building new ones. Imagine! Save yourself by INCREASING your footprint! Such materialistic thinking may…may shift if Obama’s example of community conscience is allowed in the world.

He is not inclined to offer the easy answer, nor does he pretend to be a squeaky clean All-American. Schadenfreude only partly explains our gratification when politicians are found to have feet of clay. A shadow may not be pretty, but it is an indication of substance. At the very least it is an opportunity to be real. Obama may yet dent American complacency, and that has to be a giant step in the spiritual evolution of humankind.

Amazing political-economic theories gave rise to some of the greatest monsters of our time (Stalin, Pol Pot). I cannot convince myself that Hitler had good intentions that went wrong, but he did not do his worst all by himself. The German psyche at that time permitted it. One may disagree with the thinking behind Nazism, but really much worse theories have been and gone and did less damage. The real fault lay in the feeling, some deep lack (of compassion?) that allowed such horrors.

“Cometh the hour, cometh the man.” Let us hope that the converse is also true. Did Nelson Mandela single-handedly prevent a bloodbath in South Africa, or was the nation ready for his example? If the American people can bring themselves to empower a leader that does not conform to conventional morès, there is hope for the world. Obama may… just may offer a chance to veer the beast slightly off course, and in so doing affect its ultimate destiny.

Many people are better equipped than I to comment on the economic implications for South Africa, but in terms of consciousness, Obama as president can only benefit us. Let’s face it, we have to think differently. I seriously doubt that we can save the planet. In spite of Bruce Willis and Green Peace, human beings as a species are doomed. But until we become extinct we need to grab every opportunity to save our souls. This is one of those.

Suenel. Holloway
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McGregor, South Africa